Learning to count

When a child first learns to count most parents cannot contain their pride, and rightly so. I often see parents encouraging their offspring to show off and recite this new found skill at every opportunity. Around the same time children may begin to recognise numbers and parents will happily encourage them to name every number then spot. This is of course amazing and the parents are doing a great job, however and I really don't want to sound negative here but this does not necessary demonstrate the strong understanding of number that parents assume it does. Let me try to explain with and example. If I showed you a shape, e.g. /_/ and told you it was called 'Ho' and every time you saw that shape you said 'Ho' all you would actually have learnt was that /_/ is called Ho. In the same way when a child sees 3 and says 'three' they do not necessarily understand the concept of 3.

This is a very easy problem to tackle, especially if the child is already naming numbers, many games can be played to encourage a depth of understanding. For instance a simple matching game where you produce a number cards and the child goes on a treasure hunt to find that number of object, colour and a stop watch could also be brought in to make it more exciting.